Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5

by Jennifer Stevenson

“Add it up, team,” I said. “We’ve been pawns in a hoax Delilah is pulling on the Regional Office. We’re foot-soldiers, just like those dumb demons. I’m no expert, but it seems to me that when gods play games, grunts get hurt.”

  Amanda laughed shortly.

  I put a hand out. “All our lives have been forever changed by this sneaky love goddess. Those demons didn’t choose to have us happen to them. If Ish’s VP isn’t lying, hundreds more demons have had their reality permanently rearranged, as well.”

  “And the VP of Anger and Lust blames us,” Ish said.

  “I’m just glad that Anger demon was scared of those rose petals,” Beth said.

  “It would be nice to know why,” Jee said. “If we knew why they’re scared, we could maybe use that against them.”

  Amanda cleared her throat. “I’ve got the ten-cent analysis on the rose petals. Just a quickie.”

  “Finally!” I threw my hands in the air. “Some facts, I hope.”

  She picked up some rose petals and rustled them between her fingers. “This? It’s demon kryptonite. It’s a love spell, a potent one. Anybody vulnerable who comes near it, even just smelling it, they’re ripe to fall.”

  I caught on right away. “So it makes you fall in love?” I glanced around at my teammates. This was gonna make some people very unhappy. “What makes them vulnerable?”

  “Let’s say, it’s like, if you’re having a lot of sex, it pokes a hole in the condom.” This was a pretty fancy analogy, coming from Amanda. She added, “Demons are naturally susceptible to sensory overload. We were all pretty overwhelmed when we first got our succubus bodies, right?”

  Nobody argued.

  “This rose petal stuff sensitizes your emotions. It takes that hyper-awareness to another level. You start noticing the people around you. If you happen to be hungry for love—blam.”

  Silence.

  “It’s all over the rooms upstairs,” Reg volunteered now. Everyone turned their stares on him. “What? I been vaccing it up since I got here. Can’t get rid of it.”

  I felt sorry for my teamies.

  Not for the first time, I acknowledged that everybody pairing off had been wearing on my nerves. Now it turned out I was the only one who hadn’t been got by the whammy. My chest went hollow at the next thought. Was I invulnerable to love?

  Dammit, why was that a bad thing? I was immune to a love spell. That was great news! I was the team leader! I could run things without my judgment being clouded by hormones!

  I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Amanda said.

  My mouth opened, and I couldn’t get anything out. Who was I to gloat?

  Besides, I felt too crappy to gloat.

  “She means, we fell in love a’cuz some magic shit made us fall in love,” Reg said.

  “I don’t care how it happened,” Jee said, reaching for his hand.

  “It’s a lot like getting pregnant,” Cricket said, “actually. It can happen for a lot of reasons, but once it’s done, you still get a baby out of the deal. If you’re lucky and you work hard, it doesn’t even wreck your life. It’s wonderful.” She swapped smiles with Amanda.

  I didn’t look at Beth or Melitta.

  And I noticed suddenly that Ish was sitting in the lawn chair next to mine. My arm-hairs rose on the side closest to him. I could hear him breathing. That hollow place in my chest got hot. I could hear his heart beat. My skin sizzled and my ears rang. I could smell him. He still loves you, Beth had said less than two hours ago. She seemed pretty sure of it.

  Maybe I owed him another chance.

  Amanda broke the longest silence ever in recorded history. “What we should do is figure out how to use this stuff as a weapon. That Anger demon was scared to death of it. And he’s probably not the last one we’ll see.”

  “Good idea,” Jee said.

  “What, like, glue it to a spear and stick ’em with it?” Reg said. “Make bullets with it?”

  Ish didn’t speak. Didn’t matter that I wasn’t looking at him. I could tell he was looking at me, even if he wasn’t using his eyes.

  “Pog?” Beth, seated on the other side of me, put her hand on mine. I jumped. “You okay?”

  “Where’s that damned pizza?” I said desperately, just as the doorbell rang. I jumped up and strode to the front door.

  ISH

  Ish listened gloomily while the girls stuffed themselves with pizza and talked over Amanda’s discovery. That’s torn it, he thought. I almost had her attention for a minute there. Now if she ever does start feeling anything for me, she’ll blame it all on that rose petal love kryptonite.

  Everything was his fault. Again. If he’d let her stay at the strip club, she’d never have gone back to that pimp. If he’d even just talked to her. Maybe he could have got her to come and live with him for a while. Surely she would have thought that was better than hustling.

  He’d had these thoughts a million times. Didn’t change a thing.

  And now Delilah’s avatar had hoodooed the Lair, and he’d let them move into it without a clue, and they’d tracked the hoodoo into the Regional Office at a tournament he set up, and every one of these girls was on Buugh’s radar in a really bad way. That was all his fault, too.

  He thought with brief but intense longing of his office cubicle back in Lust. Okay, there was no beer there. But there was also no guilt. No feelings of any kind.

  “That’s a start,” Pog was saying. “Are we good? Because I am so toasted.”

  Everyone started to climb out of their lawn chairs in varying states of drunk.

  “What did I miss?” Ish said, slurring a little himself.

  Pog patted him on the back! His half-numbed body woke up with a sudden thrill.

  She said, “We’re collecting up all the rose petals we can find, and we’re gonna make weapons out of them. Psychological warfare and just plain warfare warfare. In case any more of your fans come calling.”

  Ish smiled weakly. She had a funny look in her eye. It might be good. Then again, it might be awful. She’d been pretty mad at him so far.

  “I’ve been getting my butt kicked,” she said now, lowering her voice, with her hand still on his back, “by Beth. She thinks I haven’t been fair to you.”

  Pog stood there, touching him, smiling a little, and he woke up even more.

  “So she made me admit to myself that I owed you something. Something nice,” she added, when he drew back with wide eyes. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said she was getting her nerve up. “So.”

  To his intense delight, she slid her hand up to the back of his neck and pulled his head to hers. When their foreheads touched, she whispered, “I love you too, Ish.” Then she kissed him on the lips, a big soft one.

  Two seconds later she had scurried to the door, and he heard her pounding up the metal stairs to the living quarters.

  He stood there dithering for a moment, trying to keep his heart from jumping out of his chest. Then he turned to Beth, who was organizing cleanup. “You got enough hands here?”

  “Go, go,” she said, smiling. “You must be tired.”

  He wasn’t tired at all.

  But when he got upstairs, Pog’s door was locked.

  That was okay. He knew Pog. She was most nervous when she was most exposed. He went to his own room and lay down, thinking of Pog—no, Polly at eight, sharp-witted and friendly. Polly at nine, running with him, raiding the caterers’ vans when they parked behind her parents’ house on benefits nights. Polly at thirteen, crying because she couldn’t have birthday cake. Polly at fifteen, sneaking birthday cake with him and then throwing it up. Polly at eighteen, lush and potently female, letting him kiss her behind a pillar at the Piddlies concert. Polly at nineteen, stripping for him just the once, giving him the boner of the century and tearing the heart out of his body at the same time.

  Who turned into Pog, bony and brittle on the outside, still with the softest lips in the world.

  He smiled slowly.
He should remind her to be kind more often.

  But Ish didn’t get a chance to remind her.

  He was in the kitchen, finishing a late breakfast of Mexican-style breakfast sandwiches and strawberry ice cream daiquiris, listening to the girls make plans to boobytrap the Lair with the hoodooed rose petals, when Amanda came in.

  She had been downstairs cleaning and restriping her basketball deck all morning. “Guys?” She wore a worried frown. “I think that demon brought something bad in here.”

  Pog took it out of her hand. “Looks like a grade-school swim-meet medal.”

  Ish looked, not touching, because his hands were all over chorizo grease. “Looks like one of those commemorative medallions they sell in the cheap women’s magazines, along with those ugly plates.”

  Reg said, “My ma had a whole frame full of them on the living room wall.”

  “What is it?” Cricket stuck her nose in. “Chuck E. Cheese money?”

  “The Renaissance magic term is emblem,” Amanda said. “I think it’s a door.”

  Everyone pulled back a little.

  “Oh,” Pog said, and quickly handed it back to Amanda.

  “Uh, Ish,” Amanda said warningly. “I think you should probably keep your distance.”

  “How could it be a door?” Melitta said. “It looks like just a big tacky fake coin.”

  “Well, get it out of the kitchen,” Jee said. “We can’t fight in here.”

  Ish agreed.

  The emblem started to glow.

  “Look out! It’s activating!” Pog pushed Ish back.

  “Get it out, get it out!” Beth yelled.

  Everyone blundered around as Amanda raced through the kitchen door, holding the emblem at arm’s length.

  Reg got to the manager’s door first and opened it.

  Amanda threw the emblem through the door.

  The whole team tried to cram into the doorway together. After a long second, Ish heard a thump and a tinkle as the emblem hit the basketball deck. Behind them, Pog yelled, “Get the rose petals! Everybody downstairs, now!”

  They ran downstairs. Ish looked back and saw Pog standing alone at the manager’s door, looking down, biting her lip. She looked noble, the leader in an emergency. He wished he could help.

  There was only one way he could help.

  He ran after the team. If he gave himself up in time, nobody would get hurt.

  “Fuck,” Amanda said, just as Ish showed up at her elbow. The team stood in a circle around the emblem, which was smoking and giving off sparks. “I just repainted that.”

  Pog said, “Give it some space, guys. We don’t know what’s coming.”

  Everyone backed up and stood there, foolishly clenching those damned blackened dried rose petals in their hands, watching a demonic portal open right there on their basketball deck so who-knew-what kind of assault force could come through and...be scared enough of falling in love that they ran away?

  Yeah. He could see that working. Not.

  “I know what to do,” he said in a determined voice. He bunched up his fists.

  Pog put her hand on his arm. “Back off. We’ve got this.”

  The girls gasped all together.

  A big white thing appeared without warning in the center of the circle. It was sort-of human shaped. It shuffled around in place, like a puzzled polar bear on its hind legs, and stopped when it was facing Ish and Pog. There seemed to be a darkened plexi panel where its face should be.

  “Rowr,” it said, or so it sounded to Ish.

  Pog said, “What?”

  “Hazmat suit,” Amanda said.

  “Rats,” Pog said. “Be ready, guys.”

  “Whoff floffle growf!” it said.

  Pog shook her head. “Still not getting you. Say, that viewscreen seems to be steaming up. Can you breathe in there?”

  The thing pawed at its head with both hands and pulled the whole headpiece off, revealing Buughdybogh’s jowly old-purple-guy face, his bald dome gleamed like purple chrome and his eyebrows floating over his head, as if he was so angry that they didn’t want to stay attached.

  “You!” he breathed, pointing at Ish with an oversize white glove. “You’re under arrest.”

  Ish pulled every ounce of his courage together. He squeaked, “Okay.”

  “Hey!” Pog said. “Just what is your authority here?”

  Buughdybogh deigned to give her a glance. “I’m the Senior Executive Departmental Vice President of this division, and you work for me.”

  “Well, ‘work’ is a big word,” Pog said, sidling away from Ish.

  Ish sidled right back up next to her.

  The double duke pulled at the collar of his hazmat suit. He was sweating.

  “What’s his name, Ish?” Amanda said.

  “His name is Buughdybogh.” Ish said loudly. That was worth a couple thousand years of infernal torment right there. You don’t give away a demon’s real name. Not ever.

  “Ish, don’t be a hero,” Pog hissed.

  “Everybody repeat that,” Amanda said, and we all chorused the name five or six times.

  “Stop that!” the demon VP bellowed.

  Cricket explained to Beth in a whisper. “If we know his name, we can summon him and command him.”

  “Who wants to?” Reg said.

  Buughdybogh reached behind him and tried, with his giant hazmat suit gloves on, to pluck the hazmat suit out of his butt crack.

  “Oh, I dunno,” Jee said breezily. “He might have a decent-size dick in there. Maybe he’ll show it to us,” she added, lascivious and mean.

  Buugh stopped pulling at his pants.

  “Stop that!” Pog sent a glare around the circle. “Look, Veep,” she said in a reasonable tone. “What’s this all about? We’re on a schedule today and we need Ish.”

  Buugh pointed at the floor and stomped his foot. His foot promptly went through the plywood. “This!”

  “Oh, for pete’s sake,” Amanda muttered.

  Buugh hissed, “You—you insects brought poison into the Regional Office with your stupid little game. You’ve created a lot of trouble. This department doesn’t look good.”

  “Hey, both your circles were finalists,” Ish volunteered.

  Pog tried to shush him.

  “Somebody has to pay for this.” Buugh wiggled those eyebrows like little batwings over his purple scalp.

  “It was those slacker demons who lived here before these girls,” Ish said now. “They did something hinky, I dunno what, and we never even knew. That’s where the—the poison came from.”

  “What poison?” Pog said in a cranky tone that matched Buugh’s.

  Ish could tell Pog was trying to take control of the meeting. She was an insanely brave leader. He wanted to kiss her right now. But she just didn’t understand how things worked in the Regional Office.

  “What slacker demons?” Buugh said, and Ish realized that, whether he was faking amnesia or not, he would never admit that the incubi who had first lived in the Lair had ever worked for him. They were off the grid now. This guy was such a political hound, anything that didn’t appear on the computer didn’t exist.

  Watching him glare between Pog and himself, Ish saw that Buugh’s primary concern was to save face and find a scapegoat.

  That would be Ish’s team.

  That would be Ish, putting it more precisely. The girls were just field ops. Ish was the guy with a desk and a title. Low-level management fucked up, got nailed, done and dusted—the perfect solution for a political animal like Buugh, whose status depended on quantifiable leadership achievements.

  This was where Ish could finally, finally redeem his pathetic, cowardly reputation and maybe match that dauntless courage that made Pog such a heroine.

  But apparently Pog wanted to be a heroine now. “The tournament was my idea. I called Ish and made him set it up.”

  “You made him.” Buugh’s sarcastic laugh rumbled loud enough to shake a few dried rose petals off the I-beams overhead. He looked
at Ish. “You’re their supervisor. You’re responsible for what they do.”

  Ish pushed forward, but Pog shoved in front of him. “C’mon, you’ve worked with him how long?” she said, as Ish opened his mouth. “Anybody can push this guy around.”

  Ouch, that hurt. She’d always made fun of him for being cautious, but she’d never called him a wimp before.

  When Ish stepped forward again, Amanda’s hand fell on his neck from behind and pinched. The world darkened. He felt his knees go. She caught him under the arms before he could fall all the way to the plywood deck. He struggled woozily in her grip.

  Pog looked at the double duke of hell. “You see what a wuss he is.”

  Ish could only gargle faintly.

  “Well, you are,” she said, looking down at Ish with abstract pity. “You’ve had a boner ever since you walked in our door. Doesn’t make you a bad person.”

  “But—” he protested. His insides shriveled and his throat tightened.

  “Who,” Pog said, raising her voice over his and looking Buugh in the eye, “is more useful to you? A spineless apparatchik behind a desk who you can always bully? Or a mouthy broad who accidentally brings poison into the RO and makes all this trouble?”

  Ish staggered to his feet and thrust forward between her and Buugh.

  She put one hand on his chest and shoved, using a ton of succubus mojo that blew his mind and left a wet spot on his crotch. His legs went wobbly again. The shove was decisive, but he also felt fear in Pog’s touch.

  He knew what she was up to. She wasn’t humiliating him in front of everybody to repudiate him. She wanted to save him.

  She turned away as if he’d ceased to exist. She said scornfully, “Yes, I made him do the basketball tournament. He’s so randy, he didn’t stand a chance.”

  Ish could tell Buugh was getting the heebie jeebies, standing here in the Lair’s contaminated space. A rose petal fluttered slowly down from the ceiling at the psychological moment, right in front of his face. Buugh shuddered. He probably wanted out of here, bad. He would have to make a decision soon—any decision.

  Ish whispered, “Pog?”

  Behind him, Amanda said, “Sorry, bro.”

  He felt a thump on the back of his head that sent him to his knees.